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They kept going this way until they were close to the city. Mia looked out of the carriage and saw that the scenery had changed. Deep shades of green had turned into a soft gold that looked like the moon. The change in color was so large that it was like someone had put clear glass right in front of her eyes.

Mia was interested and asked, “I guess they aren’t done harvesting the wheat here yet?”

Rania smiled. “You’re right. The wheat that grows near the castle is usually picked over the course of six days. If a family’s oldest child is over 10 years old, they all come here and help with the harvest together. When they are done, the Thanksharvest Festival will start.”

The purpose of Perujin’s Thanksharvest Festival was to give thanks to the Lord, but it was also a way to count people. Every year, the oldest kid of each family would go to the capital and report on any changes, like new babies, that had happened in their family. Then, a few people from the group would be chosen to be the king’s special guards for two years. After that, they would go back to their own villages and start farming again while also trying to keep order in their own towns.

“Oh, it’s a festival for the whole kingdom then.”

“Wow! Miss Mia, look! I can now see it!”

Mia looked forward, drawn by Bel’s excited voice.

“So that’s Auro Ardea, the capital city of the Perujin…”

She took another look around her.

“Auro Ardea is the ‘skyward village of gold.’ I can see where the name comes from.”

Once upon a time, a Tearmoon nobleman was said to have come to Perujin and called the city “an abject failure to live up to its name” and “little more than a small town in a poor vassal state.” The nobleman spat as he left, asking where the gold was.

Mia thought that if the nobleman had come during harvest time, the story would have been different because the thing he was upset about would have been in plain sight, just as it was now. Gold was definitely used to decorate the village. Wheat that was almost ready to harvest grew in sloping fields. From far away, it looked like a long set of golden stairs with a rectangular building at the top.

Huh, that’s an interesting shape. Where have I seen that kind of thing…?

“Are you looking at the castle?” Rania asked Mia when she saw her looking at the building.

“Yes. It has such an odd shape. To be honest, it doesn’t look much like a castle.”

“It sure doesn’t,” Rania said with a laugh. “That’s because buildings in Perujin aren’t made for fighting. There are no walls or buildings for guards. The walls are made of wood and are thin. Maybe that’s why so many people like it. We even have a classic cake that looks like our castle.”

Oh, cakes! That’s it! That’s what I think of when I look at the structure. Even more so the color. It looks just like a freshly baked cake. No wonder so many people like it! And rumor has it that there are even cakes in the shape of it? I’m curious what they are like. Could the size of the cakes match that of the real thing?

“Does it interest you?” Rania asked.

“It most certainly does!” Mia happily nodded.

As I expected, Her Highness is interested in the castle and what the Perujin royalty who lives there thinks…

Ludwig had hoped that Mia would be interested in the situation. He didn’t find it strange that Perujin buildings had their own style. He knew that they were built without thinking about how they could be used in battle, which was a very unusual way to do things.

The Whitemoon Palace was Lunatear’s pride and joy. It was built with the idea that beauty was more important than anything else, but it still had all the features of a defensive fortress. In the end, castles were built to protect people, and some of their basic features have always stayed the same.

But not in Perujin. All of that went out the window when they built their castles. The building on top of the sloping fields was so exposed that it felt like it had nothing on it. There was none of the roughness that is often found in buildings that are meant to look powerful and scary. Instead, it was just…simple. Innocent. Almost cheerful. As for where this idea came from…

Rania said in a casual way, “It’s a weird castle, don’t you think? If there was ever a fight, it would probably be burned down in a flash. But war would also burn all the fields, so in the end it doesn’t matter. What good is a big, beautiful castle if there is nothing else to do?”

What she said was basically the national plan of the Perujin, who have a lot of farms but not much else. In the game of war, their rules for winning were very different from those of the other players. They couldn’t afford to have their own land become a battlefield. Unlike most small countries, they couldn’t even buy time and wait for help from countries that supported them. As soon as war came to their countries, they lost.

In fact, they had never planned to fight wars to begin with. “Stay out and stay away” was the main goal of their plan when it came to war. The unwritten conclusion of this plan was that if war broke out anyway, despite their best efforts, they would just accept that they couldn’t stop it.

The more they did to get ready for war, the more they wasted. In that case, it would have been better not to do anything.

Of course, having Tearmoon’s army on their side scared people away, and the Holy Principality of Belluga’s moral code made it hard to start a war. Both of these things helped Perujin. These two things were important to their country’s safety. So, most of Perujin’s political moves were aimed at getting the most out of them.

Even so, Ludwig just couldn’t believe that Perujin was completely confident in this defensive plan. He didn’t think people were smart enough to do it. He thought that giving up if war broke out was the same as saying, “There’s no point in stockpiling food because no amount of food would be enough during a great famine.”

So, he must have been as interested as Mia seemed to be. How did Princess Rania feel about it all?

“Is it really possible to give up that easily? Everything will be lost if there is ever a war. Can anyone really admit that, just accept that nothing can be done and therefore nothing should be done?”

It was awkward for him to jump into the princesses’ talk without being asked, but he couldn’t help himself. When he asked her the question, Rania took a moment to think before replying.

“I agree with you that there is an element of ‘giving up,’ but I think that my ancestors built the castle that way because that was their ideal…”

“Their…ideal?”

“Yes. That there would come a time when buildings built for war would no longer be necessary… That once everyone had enough food to eat, there would be peace, and looming monsters meant to scare people would be a thing of the past. I think they dreamed of a time when all the houses in the world would look like peaceful buildings.” Rania laughed in an awkward way. “It’s just one of my pet ideas, though. I’m sorry that I got off track. That must have sounded like a lot of nonsense.”

That’s true. From Ludwig’s point of view, it was just a childish dream. He did know, though, that the person he worked for was not someone who laughed at the words of dreams. When he turned to face her, he saw that, as he’d thought,…

“It’s not at all silly. I think it’s a great idea.”

…Mia had the kindest smile.

I expected her to say that.

Mia would never put down the work that went into a dream or an ideal, no matter how far from reality they were. At the same time, Ludwig couldn’t help but think that if Mia was involved, maybe reality would be persuaded to accept those dreams and goals.

As he looked at Mia with awe, she happened to laugh and say, “A castle in the shape of a cake. What a fantastic idea!”

Ludwig thought that she must mean a cake in the shape of a castle. Not the other way around. But all he did was smile. He may have joined in their talk, but he wasn’t so rude as to call attention to a small slip of a tongue.

Was it a slip of the tongue, though?